I just bought a lens off of Craigslist. It is a 55-200 DX and they were asking $150 for it. I offered $125 and they agreed to meet me. Met with the seller and put it on my camera and it works fine so I paid her and went home. I took a look at the lens and saw that it is a non VR lens! I assumed it was the VR lens because it was priced like it was, I didn't even know there was a non VR version of this lens. Is this lens even usable without a tripod?

That's still a fair price for the older non-VR lens, so you didn't get off too bad.